QuoteReplyTopic: True Effort of Trawling- A Snapshot in Time Posted: 24 July 2018 at 11:52am

This will be an ongoing thread that I will update with additional information as I get time-

This morning, July 24, 2018, at 9:00am the screen shot below shows 23 fishing vessels (shrimp trawlers) actively or with recent activity within the past few hours in the Pamlico Sound.

All of these boats where running active AIS/MMSI Class B systems required on vessels 65-feet or greater in length.

There were certainly smaller vessels (less than 65-feet in length) not required to have a AIS/MMSI system that were also actively trawling the same waters.

The smallest of these 23 trawlers was 65-feet and the largest was 105-feet (which seems overly large and may be an error in the MMIS file). All of these boats would be "four-bangers" pulling four nets for a combined headrope length of 220-feet per vessel.

I will post an update later listing the individual 23 vessels. The shot below shows the positions as of 9:00am- The trawlers are beige icons. Ferry boats are blue and green icons.

Below are two examples of info (recent track and vessel data) that is available on one boat- the Bald Eagle II

Keep in mind that the NCDMF will measure Effort of these 23-vessels by TRIPs. One trip measured when the vessel leaves the dock and returns to the dock.

Most of these large vessels leave the dock on Sunday morning, or afternoon, to be in position for the shotgun start at 5pm on Sunday and return to the dock on Friday before the temporary close of weekly shrimping at 5pm on Friday. Most will be "at sea" for five days- one trip.

Let's look at true EFFORT-

...and that is giving the vessel a 12-hour day...which is very low. Most of these vessels will trawl 15...18...to 20 hours per day. True effort could be 30% to 66% more than my very conservative estimate.

Tracking a vessel for 24-hours will be part of the updated data to follow.

Below shows the track of the Bald Eagle 2 for almost a 18-hour period. He hasn't rested yet?

Is true EFFORT for these vessels as few as 23 "TRIPS"...obviously not.

126,960 acres = 198 square miles which is the size of an area represented below- approximately a 10 x 20 mile rectangle.

Not an inch of that bottom would be left "unplowed" in a weeks time...one week.

The Pamlico Sound shrimp trawl season lasts for at least 15 to 20 weeks.

The deeper waters of the Pamlico Sound will be swept clean of juvenile finfish, scattered oyster rocks, remaining SAV areas and leveled flat during that one summer/fall season.

At 4:30 PM, Tuesday, July 24th the update shows a few more boats with active AIS/MMSI versus the 23-vessels at 9:30 this morning-

Overall view-

Three of these "new vessels" have joined the Little Hobo and Jonathan Ryan in close quarter maneuvering with the Cedar Island to Ocracoke Ferry Silver Lake off Cedar Island, which is a great example of why the US Coast Guard should be stringently enforcing compliance of AIS/MMSI use by these big ocean going trawlers that could sink a ferry in a collision.

Past history suggests that some of these vessels are actively managing their AIS/MMSI transmissions to prevent tracking...a huge liability for the Coast Guard (if not actively engaged in enforcement) and the owner of the vessel...think criminal and civil. You can't hide it after the fact once people die in a ferry collision- there will be track history, or lack of it, for anyone to find.

I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of these cut off with Rick's research. How do we let this crap go on? Why wouldn't the shrimpers like a shorter more condensed season when there are more and bigger shrimp? Wouldn't that lower their overhead significantly? I understand you wouldn't have as long a time to make money, but that is a risk you take in an industry such as this.

I think it's also ridiculous that none of the studies really go deep into finding other ways to catch shrimp. It's just the same bullballyhoo with BRDs, when the main culprit is the trawl itself. You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.

Let's use Global Fishing Watch to look at 2017 Effort in the Pamlico Sound.

Keep in mind that GFW uses an algorithm to track "fishing activity".
Each dot is a single plot in a fishing track, but the dots can be well spaced out. You don't see a track line (Fishing Effort) until you click on a dot. You'll see below.

The photos below ONLY represent effort by vessels >65-feet that were actively transmitting under federal rules for AIS/MMSI requirements-

May

May and June

May+June+July

May+June+July+August

May+June+July+Aug+Sept

May+June+July+Aug+Sept+Oct

June+July+Aug+Sept+Oct+Nov (May dropped)

November 2017 Only Effort

...and the boats had moved out of the Pamlico to the beach in December (Dec-17 and Jan-18)

Below is an example of a track if you click on one dot-

December and January (two months) for the Capt Ralph

Below is an example if you enter a date range and a vessel's MMSI #

You can see that in December and January that the Jonathan Ryan trawled off Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras, headed to Hampton Roads for a refit and then went to the winter Northeast fluke and/or scallop fisheries.

They all don't tow 220ft of headrope it takes tremendous power to pull 4 55ft nets and all those boats you see don't have that kind of power alot do but alot don't either.So your numbers are no where near correct.

None of you boys math will work ya'll don't know each and every boats headrope length that shrimps our sounds therefore you can't come close,the average joe see ya'lls math and believe it just as some of ya'll believe it.Pitiful

FM,You are arguing about the minute details.The magnitude of the data is overwhelming and sad.Even if EVERY boat does NOT pull 4x55 or boats under 65ft are NOT represented in the data, it shows the intensity of effort as well as breath in a defined area. Even if the data presented is only 95 or 90% accurate, it is bringing light to the destruction of habitat occurring in our sounds. Year...after year...after year. Sure hate when technology provides data that cannot be disputed, since it's coming straight from the boat themselves.

Floudermn... we may not know what each boat pulls in waters west of the inlets in NC. I grant you that, but we do know this.

In other east coast states they pull zero in most waters west of the inlets (demarcation line, to be specific) and in the Gulf states no more than 50 feet of head rope per boat

Why? But most of all to so many North Carolinians, why do NC waters have to bear such intense activity and juvenile finfish bycatch mortality when no other state allows it?

If you wish to call Pamlico Sound an inland sea as some bizarre justification then I will show you a bigger one called Chesapeake bay where shrimp live and no trawls are allowed.

Going back to when the late William Clark of Belhaven took aerial photos of trawls working in Pamlico sound to Rick's latest work we have known what is happening. The DMF has reported the carnage through studies time after time. Former director Louis Daniel publicly stated while at the reins that NC was not protecting all of her known nurseries.

So why does it continue? No one has tried to stop it at the MFC or legislative level.

With all this data no MFC has ever made a motion to stop trawling in the secondary nursery for gray trout in Pamlico sound.

No MFC has ever voted, win or lose, to put a season on Pamlico sound for trawling. It still doesn't have one nor a minimum size limit on shrimp.

We can blame the DMF, senior staff, or legislators from Raleigh, but until a MFC is a force for stopping this in NC it will go on.

Many current and former MFC members are friends of mine, but all have failed to use the commission on which they serve or served to clean it up. I am too old to worry about their feelings over this. You guys, and gals, tolerated it or else you would have done something about it because no issue in NC fishery management has science crying for change more than this one issue.

Do something!

Edited by Ray Brown - 25 July 2018 at 8:21am

I am a native of NC. The "bycatch captial of the east coast of the US". Our legislature lets us kill more fish for no reason than any other Atlantic Coast state. I hope they are proud.

A new report raises concerns that when fishing vessels "go dark" by switching off electronic tracking devices, in many cases they are doing so to mask the taking of illegal catches in protected marine parks and restricted national waters.

In the report released Monday by Oceana, an international conservation group, authors Lacey Malarky and Beth Lowell document incidents of fishing vessels that disappear from computer screens as they shut off collision-avoidance beacons near restricted areas, only to have them reappear days or weeks later back in legal fishing grounds.

Malarky and Lowell used Global Fishing Watch, which aggregates automatic identification system, or AIS, signals to give an unprecedented view of global fishing activity. AIS signals can be viewed by the public through such websites as Vesselfinder.com.

Yet another system, known as Vessel Management System, or VMS, is not available to the public but is used by countries to monitor their fishing fleets. However, "some countries can't afford it — developing countries like those in West Africa," Malarky says. "So, a lot of developing countries rely on AIS to monitor their fishing fleet."

AIS has been around for about 20 years and is designed to give valuable information about a vessel — including its type and size, location, course and speed — to other vessels to help avoid collisions at sea. The International Maritime Organization requires all commercial vessels in international waters larger than 65 feet to have the system aboard.

Even so, when it comes to transmitting AIS, there are exceptions. Among them, AIS can be switched off at a captain's discretion for security reasons, such as when transiting an area where piracy is a concern. Loopholes such as these, Oceana says, can be exploited by unscrupulous fishing vessels to move in and out of no-take areas undetected.

Sifting through millions of incidents of vessels "going dark" — many presumably for legitimate reasons — the report details four cases that the authors believe are particularly suspicious:

-- The Panamanian-flagged Tiuna, a 223-foot purse seiner that failed to transmit an AIS signal for 15 days while operating near the Galapagos Marine Reserve — one of the largest and most diverse such protected areas in the world.

-- Egaluze, a 170-foot Spanish purse seiner whose AIS signal disappeared intermittently over a seven-month period while operating in restricted national waters of at least five West African countries.

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AIS track of Egaluze. Oceana hide caption

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Oceana

AIS track of Egaluze.

Oceana

-- The Spanish-flagged Releixo, a 120-foot trawler, whose AIS signal disappeared repeatedly over a six-month period near the maritime border of Senegal and Gambia.

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AIS track of Releixo. Oceana hide caption

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Oceana

AIS track of Releixo.

Oceana

The European Commission and the Spanish government have opened investigations into the cases spotlighted by Oceana, Malarky tells NPR. "It's an unprecedented step for the EU in terms of AIS non-compliance."

"What they are going to do is cross-check" the blanks in the AIS picture against VMS "to see if maybe they were fishing where they weren't supposed to be."

She says these individual incidents only serve to draw attention to what Oceana believes is a much larger problem.

"We really wanted to highlight these cases of vessels in suspicious areas where they are turning off their AIS, like no-take marine protected areas where commercial fishing is prohibited [and in] developing countries' waters, where [those countries] may not have effective monitoring and control policies in place," she says.

The report's authors recommend that governments require vessels flying their flag be required to notify authorities when they turn off AIS, giving the reason.

Right now, Malarky says, "there's no public accountability" for suspicious behavior and that by requiring vessels to explain why they may have turned off AIS, authorities would be able to better monitor what is going on.

"When we find these instances in suspicious locations, we need to be able to cross-check and say, 'this vessel was concerned about this' and not doing anything illegal," she says.

They all don't tow 220ft of headrope it takes tremendous power to pull 4 55ft nets and all those boats you see don't have that kind of power alot do but alot don't either.So your numbers are no where near correct.

Let me know which of these 29 boats that are actively running AIS/MMSI and trawling the Pamlico Sound within the last 24-hours don't have the power to pull four 55-foot nets... standing by...

7 of those 29 are boats that can not trawl inland waters of their home states who have an Atlantic coast. On the Gulf side of Florida they can pull 50' inside.

That is nearly 25% of the known current working fleet in sovereign NC waters. Interstate commerce rules allow boats to traverse from state to state, but don't guarantee them harvest access to the sovereign waters of any state.

I am a native of NC. The "bycatch captial of the east coast of the US". Our legislature lets us kill more fish for no reason than any other Atlantic Coast state. I hope they are proud.

"The deeper waters of the Pamlico Sound will be swept clean of juvenile
finfish, scattered oyster rocks, remaining SAV areas and leveled flat
during that one summer/fall season."

But yet your extrapolations assume a pound of shrimp has the same weight and composition of bycatch/bykill at the beginning, middle and end of the season. Hardly expected if swept clean.

I asked a DMF employee who works with the shrimping industry if there was less bycatch at the end of the season or if multiple passes are made in the same area. He said it is completely unpredictable. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

And you need to adjust your extrapolations for when the nets are hauled back out of the water.

I'm not here for a long time, but I'm here for a good time.

The days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectationsWell, I have really good days - Ray Wylie

Bernie.....Pamlico sound is populated with spot, croaker, and gray trout all summer because each is a spawner in the ocean or in the case of gray trout they are batch spawners just inside, in, or just outside the inlets in warm months. Pamlico Sound is populated by these three species by specimens born outside it for the most part, thus a constant flow of juveniles thanks to wind and tide all summer is a constant event. The DMF has said this and reported this for years so seeing juvenile fish all summer proves their point. The late Dr. Jonathan Miller form NCSU identified this in his many studies on lagoons and how they are populated by certain species from outside the lagoon itself.

It is also one of the reasons of the misconception that some spot never grow up because the old timers saw two finger spot in May and again in October. That's because they are being born all summer and entering the sound all summer from the ocean.

I mean...how obvious is this when you find this on the web???

Life cycle: Atlantic croaker mature between ages 2 and 3 and spawn offshore over a protracted period which usually peaks in October. Eggs and newly-hatched larvae drift toward land, and later, as juvenile fish, swim into estuarine nursery areas where they remain until the next fall when they migrate into open waters.

The sound is being swept clean all summer of juvenile spot and croaker, but all those egg layers in the ocean keep replenishing all summer. Can you imagine what would happen if only 10% of a summers mortality got to be adults? Heck, it would be like old times in a short period of time.

In five years you would know because the life expectancy of spot and croaker is only about 5 years for spot and 8 years for croaker.

If we stopped inland trawling right now then by 2025 we should have definitive answers on this once and for all unless you consider what Virginia says about stopping trawling in Chesapeake Bay back in the late '60's. If you take their knowledge then we already know what would happen and we know why they no longer allow trawling in their waters for anything.

And BTW.....a former member of the MFC sent me a note and a link this morning after reading this thread....I got a kick out of it because I know it is true.

"Ray is correct about the power of the MFC, I did not know it either before, but I do know now!"

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